新概念英语课文(第四册)打印背诵版.pdf

Lesson 1 Finding fossil manWe can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East,where people first learned to write.But there are some parts of the word where even now people cannot write.The only way that they can preservetheir history is to recount it as sagas-legends handed down from one generation of another.These legends areuseful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago,but none could writedown what they did.Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples nowliving in the Pacific Islands came from.The sagas of these people explain that some of them came fromIndonesia about 2,000 years ago.But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas,if they had any,areforgotten.So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first modernmen*came from.Fortunately,however,ancient men made tools of stone,especially flint,because this is easier to shapethan other kinds.They may also have used wood and skins,but these have rotted away.Stone does not decay,and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappearedwithout trace.Lesson 2 Spare that spiderWhy,you may wonder,should spiders be our friends?Because they destroy so many insects,and insectsinclude some of the greatest enemies of the human race.Insects would make it impossible for us to live in theworld;they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds,if it were not for the protection we getfrom insect-eating animals.We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put togetherkill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders.Moreover,unlike some of the other insect eaters,spiders never do the harm to us or our belongings.Spiders are not insects,as many people think,nor even nearly related to them.One can tell the differencealmost at a glance,for a spider always has eight legs and insect never more than six.How many spiders are engaged in this work no our behalf?One authority on spiders made a census of thespiders in grass field in the south of England,and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre;that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch.Spiders are busy for at least halfthe year in killing insects.It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill,but theyare hungry creatures,not content with only three meals a day.It has been estimated that the weight of all theinsects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the humanbeings in the country.Lesson 3 Matterhorn manModern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good sport,and the moredifficult it is,the more highly it is regarded.In the pioneering days,however,this was not the case at all.Theearly climbers were looking for the easiest way to the top,because the summit was the prize they sought,especially if it and never been attained before.It is true that during their explorations they often faceddifficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature,equipped in a manner with would make a modern climbershudder at the thought,but they did not go out of their way to court such excitement.They had a single aim,asolitary goal-the top!It is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it was for the pioneers.Except for one or two placessuch as Zermatt and Chamonix,which had rapidly become popular,Alpine village tended to be impoverishedsettlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains.Such inns as there were generally dirty andflea-ridden;the food simply local cheese accompanied by bread often twelve months old,all washed downwith coarse wine.Often a valley boasted no inn at all,and climbers found shelter wherever they could sometimes with the local priest(who was usually as poor as his parishioners),sometimes with shepherds orcheese-makers.Invariably the background was the same:dirt and poverty,and very uncomfortable.For menaccustomed to eating seven-course dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home,the change to theAlps must have very hard indeed.Lesson 4 Seeing handsSeveral cases have been reported in Russia recently of people who can detect colours with their fingers,and even see through solid and walls.One case concerns and eleven-year-old schoolgirl,Vera Petrova,who hasnormal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her skin,and through solid walls.Thisability was first noticed by her father.One day she came into his office and happened to put her hands on thedoor of a locked safe.Suddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers locked away there,and even described the way they were done up in bundles.Vera*s curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific research institute in the town of Ulyanovsk,near where she lives,and in April she was given a ser。